Herman van Nazareth

Graphic artist, painter, sculptor, designer of wall textiles,… the artistic achievements of Herman van Nazareth, alias of Herman van Aerden, are manifold. Van Nazareth’s abstract-expressionist imagery is unpretentious, rough and powerful, faceless but with a distinct voice. His pictorial and sculptural language is restrained and universal and goes back to the basic shapes, sometimes hinting at ethnic art. It is especially his works from the South-African era that are a testimony of the artist’s personal sentiments and engagement in the social and political debate of the time. He sculpts anonymous witnesses, suffering people, numbed and powerless in a society ruled by aggression and exclusion. His pictorial work taps into the same vein, but in his paintings of people with mask like expressions and abstract landscapes, his use of colour is more exuberant, sometimes strangely bizarre. Herman van Nazareth’s work is internationally acclaimed and for the first time his extraordinary output has been collected in a comprehensive catalogue.